List of theoretical physicists

The following is a partial list of notable physics theorists, those who are recognized in theoretical physics. Arranged by century of death, then year of birth:

Ancient times

Thales (c. 624–546 BCE)
Pythagoras^* (c. 569–475 BCE)
Democritus° (c. 460 BCE)
Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
Archimedesº* (287–212 BCE)

Middle Ages

Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c.1040)
Al Beruni (c. 973 – c. 1048)
Omar Khayyám (c. 1048 – c. 1131)
Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950)
Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274)

15th–16th century

Nicolaus Copernicusº (1473–1543)

16th–17th century

Galileo Galileiº* (1564–1642)
Johannes Keplerº (1571–1630)
René Descartes‡^ (1596–1650)

17th–18th century

Blaise Pascal^ (1623–1662)
Christiaan Huygens^ (1629–1695)
Isaac Newton^*º (1642–1727)
Gottfried Leibniz^ (1646–1716)

18th–19th century

Leonhard Euler^ (1707–1783)
Joseph Lagrange^º (1736–1813)
Charles Coulomb (1736–1806)
Joseph Fourier^ (1768–1830)
Thomas Young‡* (1773–1829)
Michael Faraday*† (1791–1867)
George Green^ (1793–1841)
John Dalton^ (1766–1844)

19th century

William Hamilton^º (1805–1865)
Hermann von Helmholtz‡† (1821–1894)
James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)
Heinrich Hertz* (1857–1894)

19th–20th century

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin* (1824–1907)
Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
J. Willard Gibbs†^ (1839–1903)
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)
Nikolay Umov (1846–1915)
Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928)
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
Max Planck (1858–1947)
Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943)
Marie Curie (1867–1934)
Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951)
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937)
James Jeans° (1877–1946)
Albert Einsteinº (1879–1955)
Max von Laue (1879–1960)
Paul (1880–1933) and Tatyana Ehrenfest (1876–1964)
Richard Tolman° (1881–1948)
Arthur Eddington (1882–1944)
Emmy Noether (1882–1935)
Max Born (1882–1970)
Niels Bohr (1885–1962)
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)
Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)
Georges Lemaître (1894–1966)
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974)
Igor Tamm (1895–1971)
Leó Szilárd (1898–1964)
Ali Moustafa Mosharafa ( 1898–1950 )
Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)
George Eugene Uhlenbeck (1900–1988)

20th century

Enrico Fermi* (1901–1954)
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976)
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (1902–1978)
Pascual Jordan (1902–1980)
Paul Dirac (1902–1984)
Eugene Wigner (1902–1995)
Robert Oppenheimer* (1904–1967)
George Gamow‡° (1904–1968)
Felix Bloch (1905–1983)
Ettore Majorana (1906–1938)
Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906–1972)
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (1906–1979)
J. Hans D. Jensen (1907–1973)
Hideki Yukawa (1907–1981)
Lev Landau (1908–1968)
Viktor Ambartsumian (1908–1996)
Ilya Frank (1908–1990)
John Bardeen (1908–1991)
Anatoly Vlasov (1908–1975)
Nikolay Bogolyubov (1909–1992)
José Enrique Moyal (1910–1998)
Arsenij Sokolov (1910–1986)
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995)
William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995)
Robert Dicke (1916–1997)
David Bohm (1917–1992)
Dmitry Zubarev (1917–1992)
Richard Feynman (1918–1988)
Julian Schwinger (1918–1994)
Igor Ternov (1921–1996)
Feza Gürsey (1921–1992)
Sergei Tyablikov (1921–1968)
Abdus Salam (1926–1996)
Dennis Sciama (1926–1999)
Gurgen Askaryan (1928–1997)
Revaz Dogonadze (1931–1985)
Victor Popov (1937–1994)

20th–21st century

Hans Bethe° (1906–2005)
John Wheeler (1911–2008)
Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009)
Arthur Iberall (1918–2002)
Peter Westervelt (1919–2015)
Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015)
Chen Ning Yang (born 1922)
Behram Kurşunoğlu (1922–2003)
Philip Warren Anderson (born 1923)
Freeman Dyson (born 1923)
Bruno Zumino (1923–2014)
Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri (1924–2005)
Roy J. Glauber (born 1925)
Martin Gutzwiller (1925–2014)
Toichiro Kinoshita (born 1925)
Tsung-Dao Lee (born 1926)
Erdal İnönü (1926–2007)
Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (born 1928)
Robert Brout (1928–2011)
Richard Arnowitt (1928–2014)
Stephen Gasiorowicz (1928–2016)
Stanley Mandelstam (born 1928)
Ezra T. Newman (born 1928)
Reinhard Oehme (1928–2010)
Dmitry Shirkov (born 1928)
Murray Gell-Mann (born 1929)
Peter Higgs (born 1929)
Lev Okun (1929–2015)
Friedwardt Winterberg (born 1929)
Asoke Nath Mitra (born 1929)
Leon Cooper (born 1930)
Riazuddin (1930–2013)
Stanley Deser (born 1931)
George Sudarshan (born 1931)
Roger Penrose (born 1931)
Valery Pokrovsky (born 1931)
John Robert Schrieffer (born 1931)
François Englert (born 1932)
Sheldon Glashow (born 1932)
Jeffrey Goldstone (born 1933)
Tom Kibble (1933–2016)
Steven Weinberg (born 1933)
Hiranmay Sen Gupta (born 1934)
Ludvig Faddeev (1934–2017)
John G. Cramer (born 1934)
Julius Wess (1934–2007)
Jacques Villain (born 1934)
Lowell Brown (born 1934)
Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010)
Harald J.W. Mueller-Kirsten (born 1935)
Peter Freund (born 1936)
Gerald Guralnik (born 1936)
Abdul Qadeer Khan (born 1936)
Harold Puthoff (born 1936)
Kenneth G. Wilson (1936–2013)
C. R. Hagen (born 1937)
Leo Kadanoff (1937–2015)
Martinus Veltman (born 1937)
A. P. Balachandran (born 1938)
Anthony James Leggett (born 1938)
Jayant Narlikar (born 1938)
Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (born 1938)
Daniel Z. Freedman (born 1939)
Ratko Janev (born 1939)
Pran Nath (born 1939)
Juansher Chkareuli (born 1940)
Haim Harari (born 1940)
John Iliopoulos (born 1940)
Brian David Josephson (born 1940)
Toshihide Maskawa (born 1940)
Stanislav Mikheyev (born 1940)
Leonard Susskind (born 1940)
Kip Thorne (born 1940)
Francisco Jose Yndurain Muñoz (1940–2008)
Miguel Ángel Virasoro (born 1940)
Guido Altarelli (1941–2015)
David Gross (born 1941)
Luciano Maiani (born 1941)
Holger Bech Nielsen (born 1941)
John Henry Schwarz (born 1941)
Stephen Hawking (born 1942)
V. Balakrishnan (born 1943)
Carl M. Bender (born 1943)
Paul Frampton (born 1943)
Richard H. Price (born 1943)
Pierre Ramond (born 1943)
Jean Zinn-Justin (born 1943)
Kurt Binder (born 1944)
Makoto Kobayashi (born 1944)
Sergio Ferrara (born 1945)
Bernard de Wit (born 1945)
Michael Green (born 1946)
Gerardus 't Hooft (born 1946)
İsmail Hakkı Duru (born 1946)
Charles Thorn (born 1946)
Jürg Fröhlich (born 1947)
Howard Georgi (born 1947)
Michio Kaku (born 1947)
John Cardy (born 1947)
Walter Selke (born 1947)
Thomas Curtright (born 1948)
Dimitri Nanopoulos (born 1948)
Giorgio Parisi (born 1948)
Hugh David Politzer (born 1949)
Nihat Berker (born 1949)
Tekin Dereli (born 1949)
Ayşe Erzan (born 1949)
Carlo Beenakker (born 1950)
Sylvester James Gates (born 1950)
Robert B. Laughlin (born 1950)
Stephen Parke (born 1950)
Goran Senjanovic (born 1950)
Kyriakos Tamvakis (born 1950)
Christopher T. Hill (born 1951)
Alexei Smirnov (born 1951)
Frank Wilczek (born 1951)
Edward Witten (born 1951)
Cosmas Zachos (born 1951)
Wojciech H. Zurek (born 1951)
Paul J. Steinhardt (born 1952)
Alexander Zamolodchikov (born 1952)
Alexei Zamolodchikov (1952–2007)
Ali Chamseddine (born 1953)
Sankar Das Sarma (born 1953)
David Deutsch (born 1953)
José W. F. Valle (born 1953)
Mark B. Wise (born 1953)
Lawrence M. Krauss (born 1954)
Joseph Polchinski (born 1954)
Julia Yeomans (born 1954)
Lee Smolin (born 1955)
Fulvio Melia (born 1956)
Viatcheslav Mukhanov (born 1956)
Carlo Rovelli (born 1956)
Nathan Seiberg (born 1956)
Ashoke Sen (born 1956)
Joseph Lykken (born 1957)
Thanu Padmanabhan (born 1957)
Cumrun Vafa (born 1960)
Xiao-Gang Wen (born 1961)
Michael R. Douglas (born 1961)
Gian F. Giudice (born 1961)
Erik Verlinde (born 1961)
Jean-Philippe Bouchaud (born 1962)
Marcela Carena (born 1962)
Igor Klebanov (born 1962)
Lisa Randall (born 1962)
Carlos E.M. Wagner (born 1962)
Brian Greene (born 1963)
Gerald B. Cleaver (born 1963)
Alexei Kitaev (born 1963)
Miguel Alcubierre (born 1964)
Raman Sundrum (born 1964)
Stephen Hsu (born 1966)
Durmus A. Demir (born 1967)
João Magueijo (born 1967)
Antony Garrett Lisi (born 1968)
Juan Maldacena (born 1968)
Dam Thanh Son (born 1969)
Nima Arkani-Hamed (born 1972)
Steven Gubser (born 1972)
Maxim Chernodub (born 1973)
Yasunori Nomura (born 1974)
K. S. Babu
Mehran Kardar

Fictional theoretical physicists

Notes

* Experimentalist also
º Astronomer, astrophysicist or cosmologist also
^ Developed new mathematics
† Contributed to chemistry
‡ Contributed to biology